Thread: Halloween party scare?

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Hi guys, been reading for a while but this is my first post. I'm organising a Halloween party at a friends house, and (partly thanks to this forum) have got most of the details like food, music and decoration sorted.

Just one thing though... My friend wants this party to actually be scary. Ideally, he wants a big trick or scare of some sort for midnight. His first idea was to release a box of live bats(!) into the room but this seemed wildly impractical for so many reasons.

So he's left it to me to think of one big scare for the party. Anyone got any ideas? I've searched the forum but nothing yet... Any help greatly appreciated!

p.s. It's gonna be all adults at the party.

I've never done a real scare at my party (it's all adults too). I've got some scaredy cats in my group & I don't think they'd like it much. Letting bats loose is really scary-they carry rabies! Bad idea. The first party we had in this house, my neighbor came over in scary costume (no one knew who he was) and followed people around freaking them out. He also got right outside the house next to an open window & started and revved a chainsaw. That was freaky enough! Something like that may work if you have someone willing to do it for you. I'm doing a few motion activated signs that are kinda loud & make u jump & a spider that is noise activated and drops from the ceiling. You just need to gauge how your guests will react to pranks & scares. You don't want anyone to leave mad and not come back next year!

PLEASE don't do anything involving real animals... they would be terrified and most likely be injured or killed by some of the guests trying to escape. That is animal cruelty, too.



I know I've seen this general idea on here somewhere, but it is probably buried. (not wanting to take credit for whomever came up with this!)


At a specific time, kill all of the lights, hit the breaker to that room shutting off all the lights and music. I know I could do this in my house as I know which breaker to throw, but there may be a better way to do this if you're handy with electronics or someone else on here posts.

Have a weird light outside or from another room that was previously not lit up and a fog machine start pouring out the fog and from out of the fog comes the shape of a large person (someone that was at the party, but went off before all of this to change into different costume) and hit a chainsaw sound effect using one of the prop chainsaws (or real one with the chain removed if they can be outside).

OR

It would be really cool to douse all of the lights and have a friend that has a great pair of lungs to let out a piercing scream and have someone flip the lights back on (after a few moments) and have a bloody "dead" party guest laying somewhere.


You can do some much with sudden darkness and loud sound effects - it's a classic unexpected/startle scare. Even folks that don't scare easy will still have a startle effect from the unexpected.

Thanks for your replies! Yeah, rabies and animal cruelty were just two of the reasons I voted no on the bat thing.

I really like the revving chainsaws outside the window idea (is it easy to remove the chain from a chainsaw?), and love the scream/dead person idea. I was already toying with the idea of cutting all the lights at midnight but had nothing from there.

Why not combine them? 1. Cut lights, 2. chainsaws revving, 3. screaming, 4. lights go up and the host and his housemates are all dead on the floor!

Thanks again, I feel like I've at least got something to work with now...

I saw on a Reba where her daughter was going to a party with a male friend from an AA meeting, and then the daughters husband went outside, there was screaming, and he came back in with blood all over him and said he had to hide the body etc. Then the friend came crawling in with blood and stuff all over him like he'd been injured.

Basically, they staged a murder/accidental murder. You'd have to get people involved who were good actors and good at keeping secrets, but I think something like that would be a good scare if executed well.

I like all the chainsaw ideas, those are nice.

The only problem with all this murder-staging is that it'll be fancy dress... most people will probably be covered in fake blood already!

There's also a problem with cutting the lights... we're weighing up having the house candle-lit only (depending on the probability of accidental incineration).

If you're having alcohol candles are a bad idea! I've seen/heard from experience. I suggest swapping bulbs for colored ones to change the mood. Then you could still kill the lights.

Yeah, I didn't think about the fake murder and everyone already being bloody, it was well done on the show. But of course, that's TV.